Social psychology has long claimed neutrality in its explanations of collective behaviour, yet its foundational theories of crowds have repeatedly been co-produced with institutions of authority and mobilized in the reactionary governance of social order. This article challenges the discipline's familiar origin myth-centred on benign laboratory demonstrations of social influence-by re-situating crowd psychology as one of social psychology's earliest and most politically consequential points of emergence. From nineteenth-century crowd theory, through mid-twentieth-century de-individuation research, to contemporary public-order doctrine, assumptions about the inherent irrationality and danger of collective action have been repeatedly reformulated in scientific form, their persistence reflecting institutional and ideological fit rather than explanatory adequacy. Against this background, the article repositions the Social Identity Approach and the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM) not merely as theoretical corrections, but as a reorientation of how psychological knowledge is produced, authorized and used. Drawing on ethnographic participatory action research and sustained engagement with policing institutions in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States, it conceptualizes collective behaviour as interactional and normatively organized, with policing practices constitutive of crowd dynamics rather than external to them. The article argues that co-production is not a methodological innovation but a historically persistent condition of social psychology and that the ESIM represents a distinctive attempt to govern this condition reflexively by redirecting psychological knowledge towards legitimacy, restraint and the facilitation of democratic rights. The broader implication is that social psychology cannot plausibly claim political neutrality: its concepts travel into institutions and practices, shaping how collective action is anticipated, governed and policed.

The integration of local traditions into Islamic marriage law presents a complex dynamic in Indonesia, particularly within the Samin community in Blora Regency, which firmly adheres to the tradition of weton calculation or “ilmu titen”. This study aims to analyze the legal standing of the weton tradition within the framework of Islamic law (‘urf) and to deconstruct its cultural meaning using Roland Barthes’ Semiotic Myth theory. Employing empirical legal research methods with a juridical-sociological approach, this qualitative study collected data through in-depth interviews, participatory observation, and documentation in Kediren Village, the historical center of Samin teachings. The results indicate that the weton tradition is systematically integrated into the Nyumuk, Nyuwito, and Paseksen marriage stages, where this calculation serves not as a fatalistic prediction, but as an instrument for psychological risk management and a form of cautious effort (ikhtiar). The study concludes that weton qualifies as ‘urf shahih (valid custom) as it has harmonized with the pillars of Islamic marriage without violating the principles of monotheistic faith (tauhid). Furthermore, as a semiotic myth, weton functions to naturalize cultural values into perceived natural truths, effectively maintaining the communal identity and social order of the Samin community amidst modernization

ABSTRACT Regardless of workplace, social workers today use standardized tools for investigation, assessment and treatment that, to varying degrees, prescribe what information should be collected, with what questions, and what should be done in what order. With an ethnomethodological gaze on situated action and context, this article explores how social workers ascribe meaning to a standardized tool for family treatment, and what situated resources they use when integrating it into the treatment. Using qualitative material from group interviews with social workers, we demonstrate that the use of standardized treatment tools creates form work in far more pervasive ways than earlier research has recognized. When the treatment tool is given priority in the social order, form work means constructing the meaning of the treatment by its scripts, framing unexpected events as deviations and employing strategies to stay on path even when social reality offers challenges. If the treatment tool is given a shared priority with family relations, form work means monitoring the interpretations and uses of information, and contextualizing and translating between the structured manuals and the messy social reality. When the treatment tool is given lower priority, form work means being reflexive and legitimizing unscripted use, and living with the consequences that work efforts and effects will remain undocumented. Standardized instruments are produced and handled by people in interaction, which is why it is important that studies capture how they are used in action and in context.

ABSTRACT Nigeria's escalating banditry crisis highlights the limitations of its formal security institutions and the resurgence of traditional security systems. Rooted in indigenous norms, these traditional mechanisms comprising rulers, vigilantes, and spiritual institutions have historically maintained social order, especially in rural communities. However, the rise of transnational, technologically enabled threats like banditry has outpaced the perceived effectiveness of these traditional approaches necessitating a paradigm shift in security strategies in Nigeria. Using the northwest region as a case study, this paper explores the evolving interplay between traditional and modern security approaches, assessing the strengths, limitations and potential integration of indigenous systems into national security architecture. The study adopts a historical research methodology comprising the use of primary and secondary sources through a blend of published works and oral interviews. It argues for a hybrid strategy that harmonises cultural legitimacy with modern oversight, training, and coordination. By bridging the gap between local agency and state authority, Nigeria can construct a more inclusive and resilient framework to address contemporary security challenges effectively.

This paper examined the historical progression of criminology and its impact on the administration of criminal justice in Nigeria, focusing on the challenges and possible solutions to enhance the system. The study utilizes a dialectical review method utilizing qualitative research design, within the Social Disorganization Theory. It delves into early criminological theories, such as the theological explanations, the classical school of thought, biological theories, psychological theories, and crime in primitive societies, tracing their effects on contemporary criminology. The research also addresses the development of criminology in Nigeria, the contributions of criminology to societal advancement, and the obstacles faced by the Nigerian criminal justice framework. The results indicate that criminology has greatly aided society by elucidating human behavior, advocating for justice, and promoting social order. Nonetheless, Nigeria's criminal justice system encounters several issues, including corruption, insufficient recruitment in law enforcement, and a lack of public confidence. To tackle these challenges, the study suggests improving accountability, boosting funding and resources, implementing community-based programs, and reinforcing anti-corruption agencies. By embracing these suggestions, Nigeria's justice system can become fairer and more effective, ultimately fostering justice and safety for its citizens.

This article considers traditional Inuit beliefs and practices as expressed through human–animal relationality, examining the physical and spiritual significance of qimmiit (sled dogs), and how qimmiit functioned as co-travellers with humans across physical and spiritual realms of existence. Drawing on ethnographic and missionary narrative sources, it explores Inuit–Qimmiit relationality as central to survival in the pre-modern period. Consulted sources include the writings of explorer–ethnographer Knud Rasmussen, Church of England missionary Edmund James Peck, anthropologist Franz Boas, explorer–author Peter Freuchen, and Oblate missionary Pierre Henry (Kajualuk). These accounts, despite Euro-centric and Christian biases, provide distinct yet overlapping experiences with sled dogs and understandings of Inuit traditions and worldviews. Read comparatively, these ethnographic texts reveal how qimmiit were essential to mobility and spiritual–social order. The article draws on the Qikiqtani Truth Commission to contextualize the harm and suffering caused by the loss of qimmiit during the dog killings of the 1950s to 1970s. The song “Travel Without Me,” from the Animal Kinship Project and written to commemorate qimmiit in the aftermath of the sled dog slaughter, provides a narrative framework structured around kinship and travel, foregrounding Inuit understandings of shared journeys across human and canine existence and framing Inuit–Qimmiit relations as enduring bonds that traverse both physical life and afterlife. Within Inuit religious cosmologies, relationships between humans and qimmiit extend beyond practical cooperation to encompass shared spiritual existence, relational obligation, and continuity of soul across physical and metaphysical worlds. Ethnographic accounts recorded by Rasmussen, Peck, Boas, Freuchen and Henry describe dogs not merely as working animals but as ensouled beings who participate in travel, naming practices, shamanic mediation, cosmogonic and afterlife narratives. Read through a religious studies lens, these sources reveal a cosmological framework in which mobility and survival are embedded within sacred relational structures linking human and animal life. This article examines Inuit–Qimmiit kinship as a form of physical–spiritual relationality, arguing that dogs function as co-travellers whose relational position across embodied and cosmological domains illuminates Inuit understandings of personhood, cosmological balance, and the continuity of life beyond death.

The fallacy of meritocracy in the real-life social order

(1) Background: The purpose of this paper is to explicate the logic of community engagement in American policing. In the United States, the police are organized for crime control and social order through law enforcement. In fact, the terms police and law enforcement are often used interchangeably. This linguistic trap reifies the law-enforcer identity and disposition, while producing a logic of professional practice that prioritizes enforcement over more effective crime prevention activities. We ask, “Are there better ways to organize the police to make communities safer?” If so, what could the police do and why? To answer these questions, we first explore the structure of American policing and the logic it creates. We then examine latent community dynamics and their impact on public safety. (2) Methods: Using survey data from a statewide probability sample of households, the authors examine the impact of these dynamic processes on crime, informal social control, and support for those returning to the community from prison. (3) Findings: The findings demonstrate, in measurable ways, the essential function of community-engagement in creating safe, strong neighborhoods. (4) Conclusions: The study’s findings suggest a new framework for policing that prioritizes community engagement for relationship building and problem-oriented policing over more aggressive law enforcement campaigns.

This paper asks: What kinds of interactions do heterosexual Black women experience along their sexual journeys? And how do these interactions impact their sexual subjectivities? Analysis of intimate life history interviews with Black heterosexual cisgender women ( n = 31), ages 34 to 58, indicates that they experienced hegemonic interpellations and subversive interpellations. Hegemonic interpellations describe interactions in which the women’s sexualities were misrecognized as deviant or exploitable. These interactions constrained their sexual subjectivities. This article introduces the concept subversive interpellations to describe interactions in which the women’s sexualities were recognized as acceptable, worth nurturing, or worth knowing. These interactions expanded the women’s sexual subjectivities. Findings suggest that sexual subjectivity is an interactional process shaped by structural racism, sexism, and heteronormativity. Ultimately, the paper argues that subversive interpellations are an important way that people undermine the social order in interaction.

ABSTRACT In the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, the plays of Thomas Heywood, Robert Daborne and Philip Massinger portrayed Africa as a ‘land of deficient justice’ by staging unequal rights, private vengeance and judicial irregularities in public spaces of the Barbary states. Informed by widely circulated travel narratives and historical records, this imaginative framework reflects English anxieties over conversions to Islam and increasing migration to North Africa. By dramatizing the fragility of African public order, these plays caution against departure from national identity and Christian faith. These dramatized narratives construct imagined African public spaces marked by disorder, while simultaneously reflecting and interrogating the fragility of legal order that haunted early modern England, prompting broader reflection on governance and law. These works have shaped early modern English judicial discourse, exposing the fluid and contested character of justice, through implicit textual and theatrical inquiries into the nature of legal and social order. Present-day performance, pedagogy and scholarship invite reflection on issues of justice, identity and cultural encounters across time.

This study examines how system resilience can be strained when governments define and mistranslate epistemological uncertainties into technical and managerial problems, using two comparative case studies of sociotechnical disasters (i.e., nuclear safety failure and pandemic digital surveillance). Drawing on Funtowicz and Ravetz’s post-normal science as a framework, the analysis introduces three types of uncertainties and conceptualizes the “mistranslation of uncertainties,” through which this research illuminates a structure whereby epistemic diversity is marginalized, and in turn, policy legitimacy deficits in implementation can be amplified, potentially eroding sociotechnical resilience. The article contributes to the field of sociotechnical resilience by (1) visualizing uncertainty mistranslation, which leads to a legitimacy deficit, (2) illustrating how mistranslation develops from a monolithic, technocentric understanding of uncertainties, and (3) proposing a framework of “resilience for legitimacy” that seeks to embed resilience work and co-production of responses within institutional practices. This research highlights how the co-production of epistemological translation and social order, encompassing deliberation and social feedback, can support democratic legitimacy and thereby resilient governance of sociotechnical systems.

Cultural evolution is not as hasty as it sometimes seems to us; in any case, modern cultural orders are quite thoroughly explained by the conceptualizations of the last century in the most expressive versions of both the sociology of conflicts and the sociology of compromises, which are in no way opposed to each other in the logic of analysis of reality but are autonomous and do not exclude complementarity. One type of order is focused on the morphology of the conflict of cultural epochs and states in the terms of Georg Simmel, on the interaction of the flow of life and forms of culture, initially fixing their correspondence but subsequently losing it, up to the complete rejection by life of the forms that weigh it down, the rejection of the form of culture in general. We are talking about the opposition of the individual and society, about the insoluble conflict between individual life, which sacrifices its manifestations in favor of socially approved patterns, and cultural form, which gives rise to the “tragedy of culture.” The second perspective, on the contrary, avoids dramatic states, and places the focus on consumption, which Michel de Certeau presents as a multidimensional space of possibilities for anonymous creativity thanks to the special tactics of the ordinary person to bypass the established order, inventing an everyday life that is acceptable to him. Of course, any “branding of creativity” takes it out of the space of secrecy and into the public eye, but it is unlikely to completely neutralize its inspiration from “micro-freedom” (in Certeau’s terms). There is also a third, broader perspective on cultural orders, which has been rooted in the sociological tradition since Sombart and Weber and refers to the “spirit of capitalism”, its value and ethical justifications, and today to the “spirit of digital capitalism” in the space of action of “ethics of decision”, “solutionism” (Oliver Nachtwey, Timo Seidl), the essence of which is the belief that any social problem can be solved by “the correct use of the correct technologies.” The models of modern cultural orders presented in the article help to more accurately understand their interaction with social and economic orders, including in the circumstances of war, when Ukrainian society is in an emergent state as a result of Russian aggression.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes's and Margaret Lock's (1987) article on the "the mindful body," in which they introduce their framework of three interconnected bodies (individual, social, and the body politic), has shaped debates in medical anthropology over the last three decades and, as Yates-Doerr (2017: 142) puts it, represented "a zeitgeist for the field" (italics in original). Scheper-Hughes's related, but more politicized idea of the "rebel body," however-which she sketches in the following reprint-has not yet entered mainstream debates.Originally published only in print in the Traditional Acupuncture Society Journal (Scheper-Hughes, 1991), the article conceptualizes the rebel body as one that "refuse[s] the demand to suffer quietly" and thereby reveals and challenges political etiologies of illness. We discovered the article in our preparation of the special issue (see Führer and Vorhölter, 2025) and found it to be extremely valuable for our reflections on liberation medicine-and surprisingly timely. The article offers a compelling analysis of the political causes and potentials of illness, of pain and its demand for recognition, and of the power of refusal. While some of these themes have since been prominently discussed in more recent scholarship (see e.g., Buchbinder, 2015; Hamdy, 2008; Rose Hunt, 2016; McGranahan, 2016; Simpson, 2014), the conceptualization of the rebel body remains provocative and relevant to contemporary debates in and on medicine. By republishing this article here, we hope to make it accessible to a new generation of scholars, practitioners, patients, and activists and hereby further their aspirations toward an understanding of medicine as a form of everyday resistance.The article begins with a survey of anthropological understandings of and debates on the body, embodiment, and somatization. Based on her own fieldwork in North-Western Brazil, and using the framework of the "three bodies," Scheper-Hughes reflects on the interrelations between the individual body, the social body, and the body politic. Through a reworking of established notions of illness, suffering, and healing, she proposes to understand illness as a form of bodily praxis that can be read as an expression of protest and rebellion to unequal and unjust social and political orders. Thus read, the moment of illness carries the potential for radical reflection and subsequent action, which medicine as well as society can either mute through biomedical cooptation or respond to with engagement in political therapy.We are republishing the article with the kind permission of the British Acupuncture Council. The text has been lightly edited and this introductory note/abstract has been added by Amand-Gabriel Führer and Julia Vorhölter. We have added references that were missing in the original article and have removed those that were not mentioned in the text. Furthermore, we have included the works that we cite in this introductory note/abstract in the reference section. The article in the present form is reprinted with the permission of the author.

ABSTRACT This article examines how anti-gender mobilizations strategically (mis)use knowledge and epistemic authority to legitimize their claims. Focusing on the manual Children Are at Stake! A Manual for Mothers, Fathers, and Teachers to Protect Children from LGBTQIA+ Ideology, we situate our analysis within broader global patterns of anti-gender campaigns that target schools, universities, and academic freedom. While previous scholarship has described such practices as ‘troll science’ or ‘counterknowledge’, our study advances this work by identifying the specific mechanisms through which such knowledge is produced and mobilized. Using a mixed-methods approach, we coded 24 references cited in the manual and analysed the relationship between these sources and the claims they were used to support. The results show three distinct techniques of knowledge (mis)use: the Torsion Technique (twisting knowledge through interpretative extension or distortion), the Magician’s Technique (fabricating relevance through phantomized or invented connections), and the Echo Technique (accurately summarizing ideologically aligned but questionable sources). Together, these strategies demonstrate how anti-gender actors exploit the symbolic authority of science, often stripped of context and sensationalized, to produce a parallel politics of knowledge. We argue that these practices not only delegitimize critical scholarship but also generate alternative epistemologies that reinforce retrotopian visions of social order.

ABSTRACT Communal violence towards immigrants has been the subject of significant research, but we still do not understand how everyday hostility becomes morally approved physical harm. This article examines narratives surrounding collective violence in an Istanbul neighbourhood in 2019 and again 2022. Drawing on collaborative ethnography and autoethnography, the study situates the incidents within broader patterns of hostility towards Syrians across Türkiye that shape mundane, local interactions, such as unfriendly jokes and rumours. Addressing scholarship on violence, morality and dehumanisation, the study highlights the ways in which material insecurity, spatial anxieties and nationalist discourses intersect to rationalise exclusion and aggression. The article is a case study of the culturally specific ways dehumanisation functions, showing how gendered and moralised narratives legitimise violence under the guise of protecting the social order. Theoretically, this article challenges a common division in the literature between everyday and exceptional violence, arguing instead for a continuum in which symbolic and episodic harms are entangled via ideology, social relationships and institutional contexts. This work also calls for more nuanced understandings of how ordinary people, through everyday practices and narratives, become agents of violence with implications for policy and scholarship aimed at preventing collective acts of aggression in refugee-hosting societies.

War has always been dynamic. The paper begins by looking at the historical trajectory that led to the current state of warfare, emphasizing the transition from conventional, state-centric fights to an era defined by asymmetric warfare, cyber operations, and the fusion of conventional and unconventional tactics. Technological developments, geopolitical upheavals, and strategic thought have all had an impact on warfare's evolution. It also has an impact on the global, political, social, and economic order, which is further complicated by terrorism and cyber warfare. Information and Communicational Technological breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence, autonomous weaponry, and cyber capabilities raise questions about human decision-making. The advent of space warfare and state sovereignty calls into question traditional conceptions of combat. The study looks at the ethical quandaries raised by autonomous weapons, civilian targeting in the digital age, and the risk of irreversible environmental damage. As artificial intelligence becomes more integrated into military applications, concerns about accountability and decision-making responsibility grow. It also investigates the effectiveness of current international rules and norms in addressing these new disputes. The Arms Traffic Treaty was adopted in 2014 with the goal of reducing civilian harm by limiting the transfer of weapons to conflict zones. Several case studies are presented to provide a well-rounded perspective, including conflicts in the Middle East, hybrid warfare, and cyber warfare in the US-Russia rivalry. To summarize, a thorough understanding of modern warfare and its far-reaching consequences will enable policymakers, strategists, and the general public to navigate the complexities of a changing global security landscape. Research is conducted using qualitative and analytical methodologies.

The discourse on the hijab in the contemporary context is no longer limited to a symbol of individual piety but has developed into an arena of identity contestation fraught with politicization, stereotypes, and discriminatory practices in the public sphere. This article examines these dynamics through a netnographic analysis of the Instagram account @lia_lestari29, which represents resistance to symbolic coercion, and then analyzes them through a synthesis of Quraish Shihab’s thoughts and the Qirā’ah Mubādalah approach. The results of the study show that the integration of legal flexibility based on maqāṣid al-sharī‘ah with the hermeneutics of reciprocity is capable of reconstructing textual readings that tend to be gender biased, particularly in the interpretation of the hadith kasiyāt ‘āriyāt. This study emphasizes that the construction of public morality should not be imposed exclusively on women, but rather be positioned as a collective ethical responsibility that binds men and women equally. Thus, the recontextualization of dress ethics based on the principles of al-ḥayā’ and gender justice is a prerequisite for the establishment of an inclusive, democratic social order that is free from structural exclusion.

The sugar market in Indonesia reflects the distinct consumer behavior shaped by economic and deeply rooted cultural factors. This study explores how symbolic values attached to sugar sustain persistent, often irrational or uncontrollable consumption, highlighting the need for a demand-side perspective in the economic sociology of sugar markets. This study analyzes the nonnegotiable symbolic value of sugar and its implication to uncontrollable consumption in Indonesia. Referring to the framework of product valuation in the social order of markets by Beckert, it offers insights into both the symbolic and material values of sugar. The applied method complements digital mixed method approaches used in prior research. Digital data from online news and YouTube were visualized through textual network analysis and social network analysis to describe the symbolic and material values of sugar. In-depth interviews with key actors and limited field observations on food and beverage labels were also conducted. Findings reveal that the symbolic value of sugar increases significantly when processed into food or beverages, shaping food habits and habitus across diverse ethnic groups in Indonesia and reinforcing early dependence on sugar. Weak enforcement of labeling regulations on food and beverage packages further impedes shifts in consumer perceptions of the risks of excessive sugar consumption. This study contributes a demand-side perspective to the economic sociology of the sugar market, proposing strategies to address the sugar-driven food habits and habitus from the perspective of consumer behavior. Simultaneously, it assesses producer compliance with regulations on the sweetness level to reduce sugar consumption and the prevalence of noncommunicable diseases.

This study reconceptualizes theatrical performance not as a representation of social reality but as a model field for understanding the structural mechanisms of social action. Drawing on social interaction theory and theories of performativity, the article argues that social order is not sustained solely by abstract institutional structures but is produced through ongoing acts of presentation. A tri-layer framework of performative social action is proposed, consisting of role presentation, norm presentation, and visibility presentation. At the level of role presentation, identities are constituted through the continuous enactment of recognizable behavioral patterns. At the level of norm presentation, social rules operate through patterned modes of action rather than exclusively through cognitive adherence. At the level of visibility presentation, social interaction unfolds within a structure of observation in which anticipated evaluation shapes self-regulation. Theatre, as a highly condensed and institutionalized environment of presentation, renders these otherwise dispersed mechanisms observable. By conceptualizing the stage as a structural model of social interaction, this study demonstrates how identity, normativity, and power relations are generated through visible practices. The framework positions theatre studies as a methodological resource for social theory and advances a performative understanding of the production of social order.

The KumbhMela represents one of the world’s largest mass gatherings, exerting profound socio-economic influence on host regions. This study examines the multidimensional determinants of socio-economic impact of the KumbhMela with a focused analysis of technology, management practices, and infrastructure development. The research explores how digital interventions such as e-governance platforms, surveillance systems, mobile applications, and cashless transactions enhance service delivery, safety, and visitor experience. It further analyzes management strategies related to crowd control, inter-agency coordination, disaster preparedness, and public–private partnerships, highlighting their role in ensuring operational efficiency and social order. Infrastructure development—covering transport networks, sanitation facilities, healthcare services, temporary housing, and urban amenities—is assessed for its short-term economic stimulus and long-term developmental spillovers. Using a multidisciplinary and analytical approach, the study finds that the synergistic integration of technology, effective management, and robust infrastructure significantly amplifies employment generation, local business growth, tourism promotion, and social inclusion. The paper concludes that the KumbhMela functions not only as a religious and cultural congregation but also as a strategic catalyst for regional socio-economic transformation and sustainable urban development.